Magpie Pedals Feedback Organ: Abusing microphones to make music

30 Jan by Robin Vincent |

4,2 / 5,0 | Approximate reading time: 2 Minutes

Magpie Pedals Feedback Organ · Source: Magpie Pedals

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Magpie’s Feedback Organ attempts to answer the question of whether you can make music by pointing a microphone at a speaker. With a clever use of tubes, this is genius-level feedback manipulation.

Feedback Organ

The Feedback Organ evolved out of Simon The Magpie’s experiments with no-input techniques and talk boxes. The idea was to try to invent a machine that could cause wild amounts of feedback while offering the opportunity to tame it into some kind of musical use. You do that, of course, by pointing a microphone at a speaker.

It’s the classic feedback occurrence that anyone who has worked with live sound will be very familiar with. And usually, it’s something we try to avoid. In this case, Simon says, we want it.

However, the really clever thing in the Feedback Organ is how the mics and speaker come into contact. The organ sits the speaker next to eight individual microphones. They are facing the same way and so not interacting, although with enough gain they will start to feed into each other. The feedback interaction is caused by plugging lengths of plastic tube between the two. The speaker and microphones have a 3D printed socketed cover, which allows you to plug the tube into both to bounce the sound waves from speaker to microphone, causing the feedback.

What happens now?

Each microphone has a gain knob and a button that enables the sound. Turn the knobs up and hit the buttons, and the chaos of wild feedback will ensue in a dramatic, wonderful and barely controllable way.

The Feedback Organ also features an overdrive circuit and a PT2399-based delay to help push these feedback loops to oblivion. There’s also an external input if you fancy destroying other sound sources.

The machine ships with a 5m length of PVC tube which you can cut to whatever lengths you like. Apparently, the length can have a dramatic effect on the sound. Drawing on his Talkbox experiments, you can also put one end of a tube in your mouth to send in vocal sounds or shape modulation. You shouldn’t be shy in how you experiment with such things.

Feedback tamed

It’s an extraordinary instrument. The way you can play with feedback is amazing and the look of the beast is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s curiously physical and completely mad. It’s particularly engaging when running a sequence through it so that the feedback is feeding off melodic tones while trying to fall apart.

The Feedback Organ is a machine of extreme joy and happiness existing at the very edge of coherence. It’s available for 3,500,00 Swedish Krona or around £265.

Magie Pedals website.

Image Sources:

Magpie Pedals Feedback Organ: Magpie Pedals
Magpie Pedals Feedback Organ: Magpie Pedals

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